Islam may or may not develop in this scenario, and it may or may not be different than what Islam in our world developed as, but this scenario doesn’t posit that Christianity never existed – just that it never swept up the entire Roman empire.
Maybe, but Islam really, really borrowed heavily from Syriac Christianity. I’m not sure exactly what form it could have taken if it only had Judaism.
As for other comments, Constantine was reacting to the spread of Christianity, not encouraging it. I think that largely what it offered didn’t have to do with the metaphysics, but the practical ethics that favored the voiceless. Rome was essentially the epitome of unequal. Everyone had a status and the bulk of the world was on a lower rung. Christianity offered an essential leveling where the Emperor was no better than the beggar. It also provided what was essentially a modern welfare state. Wealthier Christians would donate large portions of their wealth to feed the hungry and take care of the widows and orphans. This was not normal at the time. If we look at the early rituals, Christianity was not about sacrificing to a god, but rather the forerunner of Communion, where everyone ate together. The early communions were actual meals rather than the wafer and sip that we have now. Basically, the wealthier Christians were subsidizing the poorer ones and providing food for them.
Christianity basically created this idea of individual human value that was non-existent at the time. The people latched on to this with vigor and Constantine knew the way the wind was blowing and he could either attempt to control it or fall before it. He took the former route, much I think to the disadvantage of Christianity today, but what can one do?
I assume that in this scenario Europe still has multiple pagan religions rather than Catholicism around the 8th century. If that’s the case, I think the most likely outcome is that most of Europe would have joined North Africa, Persia, etc. in becoming a Muslim predominant area when Islam was spreading during the 8th and 9th centuries. Further down the road Islam would have probably had even more divisions than it does in our own timeline, and there would be a European Islam that would be different just like we have differences now between Sunni and Shia Islam.
Under Christianity an Emperor was no better than a beggar? You sure about that? Maybe in theory, but much like Communism, did it ever work that way in practice? And what about people who weren’t Christian? Or are they not people?
Christianity was a tool for the Roman emperors, much like Bread and Circus – only unlike Bread and Circus, you didn’t actually have to give anyone any bread or put on a show, just tell them that they’ll get everything they want after they die.
Regarding the whole Slavery discussion – on the one hand, people are claiming that Christianity was used to end slavery. On the other hand, we have cites of chattel slavery continuing for hundreds of years in Western Europe, and Serfdom dominating the economy even after the decline of chattel slavery – though other cites show that chattel slavery didn’t actually end, it just declined. And as I’m sure you know, religion was used to justify both serfdom (it is the peasant’s divinely-ordained place to work the fields, just as it is the king’s divine right to rule) and chattel slavery (the African slave is a descendant of Cain, and is being rightfully punished for Cain’s murder of Abel).
Look, everything you’ve mentioned might line up with the teachings of Christianity, but it definitely doesn’t line up with how the religion was interpreted and practiced throughout late antiquity and into the medieval era.
As serfdom and feudalism only started to change after the plague I am not sure that my admitted limited understanding of history matches with this claim.
As serfs, bordars and slaves made up the vast majority of the peasantry and only a tiny percentage were even free tenants this seems like a romanticized view of history. Especially as serfs were bought and sold and had no rights over their own body or religion until at least the renaissance.
Sure surfs were “fixtures and furnishings” of the property and not individual assets like a slave, and had rights to their own free time but they weren’t allowed to choose their religion.
At least a Roman citizen could not be tortured or whipped at the time of Christ and that and other rights citizenship are often used to explain why the empire spread as far as it did.
While not anything like modern rights I am not finding any information that matches your claims so I would appreciate a cite if I am mistaken.
I think where there is confusion is that I was speaking of Christianity as it existed in the early Roman Empire. After it became a state religion, things changed drastically. Early Christians were much closer to socialists than the later hierarchy of Western Christendom. Early Christianity was closer to a social movement than a religious state. It was only after it became an instrument of the state that it began to take on the more negative trappings. My post was specifically pre-Constantine and mentioned that there were disadvantages that Constantine attempting to control it brought.
Before Christianity became the state religion of Rome, Christians still smashed the idols of their neighbors and especially persecuted those Jews who didn’t fall into their sect (I say “sect” because they weren’t yet a full-fledged religion separated from Judaism yet). They weren’t all rainbows and unicorns either.
I view his conversion as a political ploy but not due to the number or power of the members. When he built Constantinople it was still a very pagan city and Rome was still very diverse when it was sacked in the 400s.
I wouldn’t say it was all positive previous the the conversion of Constantine, and the forced conversions didn’t really take off until Charlemagne, the reason early Christians were unpopular with the crowds was due to the refusal to participate in traditional holidays or practices as well as to* avoid serving in the government*.
Obviously it was not a religious state because they refused to even participate, but it was political. With the reminder I am making not claim on morality here the same crowds that get angry when Starbucks doesn’t put Christmas on coffee cups were the same types of groups that were angry at Christians.
Constantine doesn’t seem to take any actions that seem to demonstrate he actually understood the cult, he just merely switched.
Remember that the first “official law” against Christians wasn’t passed until the 250s and the Edict of Milan ended that in 313. While Christians were discriminated against the claim of persecuted is a bit of a tenuous claim as the “systematic mistreatment” was not by law by by the same public disapproval. I am not saying that they did not suffer for their beliefs but they were attacked for ignoring social norms.
Even if you take Tacitus report of true and that “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians” it was blame shifting and naming a group that is hated for not following the social norms at the time (same as blaming Muslims, atheists or Witnesses today).
But note that most of the claims of persecutions seem to be mostly myths use to justify the later genocidal actions by later adherents or to feel closer to their martyrdom narrative of Jesus. Yes they suffered for their non-adherence to local custom but not primarily due to having their beliefs themselves.
The point being that while it is understandable that Christians would like to create a martyrdom story to better connect to the Jesus story, the main reason Christians didn’t have much impact before Constantine is because it was a pretty small cult which didn’t participate in government and wouldn’t have had any way to gain power.
Of course it will only be a “social movement” if they refuse to participate in democracy and lack the numbers to impact the overall society. Constantine mostly protected Christians from angry mobs when they didn’t participate in the local customs in his life time. Of course he gave birth to the Roman Catholic church…and that had a massive impact a few centuries later.
Charlemagne forward is well documented and very much related to the outcomes.
Well, he was just a human, not a god. A very powerful, rich human, but still, a mortal human.
Getting rid of things like slavery take a long time.
He wasn’t just a human under Christianity, though. He was THE human that GOD chose to rule, by divine right. His word is just as unquestionable as the word of a pharaoh who is himself a god.
Besides, even Pagan Rome didn’t view the Emperor as a deity. The Romans were very careful to avoid that kind of stuff, because of the prior baggage they had as a peoples about kings. In the Empire, they still paid lip service to many values that were held over from the Republic. The Roman Emperor’s divine right to rule came from the holy will of the Senate, not from the Emperor’s own “divine blood”. Don’t forget that Emperor wasn’t usually a hereditary title, and multiple emperors passed over their own sons to adopt a different successor. In theory (if not in practice), the latter kings of medieval Europe played up the “holy blood” angle much more than Rome’s pagan emperors. For a long time, the Emperors called themselves “Princeps” – “First among Equals”. Sure, that’s not how it worked out in practice, but that’s true of Christianity as well.
And I really don’t buy that Christianity had anything to do with the decline of slavery. Christians were perfectly happy to enslave their fellow man (even their fellow CHRISTIAN man) until 1865.
There was not effort due to the religion explicitly to get rid of slavery I am aware of and in fact slavery is easy to justify under the bible. The laws were passed to prevent Christians from being sold to Muslims at the start so I guess that could count but was way after that time.
The entire concept of the divine-right theory of kingship seems to discredit the claim that a change in morality was Christian based. The social upheaval caused by the death of 30 to 50 percent of Europe’s population seems to have have far more to do with the downfall of the feudal system than any religious concerns.
The Divine Right of Kings didnt take hold until the 1500’s.
Actually they did, off and on, depending on the Emperor.
So, who ended it? Not Paganism, not Muslims. Indeed, it was conscientious Christian abolitionists.
In the late 17th century, the Roman Catholic Church, taking up a plea by Lourenço da Silva de Mendouça, officially condemned the slave trade, which was affirmed vehemently by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839. The abolitionist movement only started in the late 18th century, however, when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanitarian grounds, and arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, Sharp and More united with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect.[1]
*An informal group of six Quakers pioneered the British abolitionist movement in 1783 when the London Society of Friends’ yearly meeting presented its petition against the slave trade to Parliament, signed by over 300 Quakers. They were also influenced by publicity that year about the Zong massacre, as the ship owners were litigating a claim for insurance against losses due to more than 132 slaves having been killed on their ship.
The Quakers decided to form a small, committed, non-denominational group so as to gain greater Anglican and Parliamentary support. …
Membership
Nine of the twelve founding members of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade were Quakers: …
Three Anglicans were founding members…*
Pretty much the abolitionist movement was a Christian movement. Not Islam, not Hinduism, not any of the major religions except Christianity, which more or less forced it on the rest of the world.
That link is about the African and Indian slave trade, if you visit the page on Slavery in medieval Europe you will see there was an effort to protect coreligionists but that shift was to “surfs” which isn’t that different and that Saint Balthild of Ascania who had been sold into slavery as a young girl put in restrictions.
Even from your link it appears that uprisings were the initial cause of changes and while slightly better the feudal system seems to be formed as a convenient way to get around biblical restrictions on what was acceptable as slavery.
You were still property, and while you did have more rights you were mostly just sold with the land vs being sold as an individual. I don’t see a huge moral claim with just changing that to bulk sales although I do think that having your own free time etc… was a step on the right direction.
The church’s limits on selling Christian slaves to non-Christian lands seemed to be more about economic warfare than empathy outside of cases like Bathilda until well after the plague.
Still, no matter how late, and for what reasons, it was Christian abolitionists, not any other faith.
Maybe they didn’t call it that, but the idea that the right to rule is divinely inspired in some way is clearly much older than that, and predates Christianity. For Roman Emperors specifically, the first line from your own Imperial Cult of Ancient Rome cite:
(Emphasis mine)
I don’t think this cite shows what you want it to show…
Seriously? You’re claiming it was the wonderful morals of Christianity that ended slavery, after sitting around for 1800 years and not just benefiting from slavery but also JUSTIFYING it in the most disgusting ways possible? Sure, sometimes they realized that this is totally incompatible with their beliefs, but for most of history doctrine not only supported by validated slavery. It wasn’t until the Enlightenment and its secular, humanist values that these “Christians” changed their mind.
No, it was HUMANIST abolitionists. Only when religion of any kind lost its stranglehold on Western society did individual rights and freedoms come to mean something. Christianity happened to be the dominant religion losing that stranglehold, but saying that it was Christianity that brought us these values is like saying that Christianity has always been at the forefront of scientific knowledge because Galileo was a Christian. You’re REALLY ignoring the context of the time.
Charlemagne was “Patricius Romanus” through inheritance from his father which was granted by the pope.
And to quote from your cite.
bolding mine
As the chief protector and coadjutor in temporals Charlemagne was also crowned and anointed at Rome by the successor of St. Peter the hard term wasn’t needed until family trees became complicated and relationships with Rome became challenging.
To quote the newadvent link above.
*“Charles constantly attributed his imperial dignity to an act of God, made known of course through the agency of the Vicar of Christ”
*
So I am arguing that the explicit use of the term didn’t matter much to the “devil worshipers” who were forced to convert or die under the these claims.
The Quakers were not well known Humanists.
Louis X abolished slavery when Petrarch was 11. Norway had ended it 50-ish years earlier. It should be noted that humanism itself was a Christian movement.
Quakers were constantly persecuted as blasphemers and not main line. But those actions also build on the actions of James Oglethorpe, a humanist and earlier rationalism of the enlightenment
William Murray Mansfield who is probably the best person to give credit to fought against religious persecution enough that one of his houses was burned down during a riot.
The Age of Enlightenment was due to Christianity but not a product of it. It was largely a response to the high cost of the Thirty Years’ War and typically sought to reduce the power of religion in public life.
The Quakers tended to simplify in their response to this similar movement but the rationalists and the rest of the Enlightenment may have happened due to Christianity but did not rise because of it.
The Enlightenment wanted to curtail the power of organized religion and the intolerance it produced. It is pretty tortuous logic to claim it arose because they were Christians and that it was based on that doctrine.